The History of Great Things (11 page)

O
ne night you're stumbling home from the P&G bar down the block when you trip over the curb and break your wrist for the third time—the same one, but again, when you wake up the next day with a giant purple paw in place of your hand, you're not really sure what happened. The guy you brought home last night, who isn't a total stranger but who is a good three or four friends away from you, tells you he doesn't know for sure either, but that you might want to think about getting some help with your drinking problem. You take great offense at this. He's the big drunk, obviously, and you tell him so.
I know
, he says,
that's how I know!
He says you should really go to AA. You
go to AA
, you say.
Ah, I've already been
, he says. You're thinking he's not the greatest advertisement for this program, but you give him the benefit of the doubt.
So you can drink and go to AA? No
, he says.
I don't go to meetings anymore. But it works, really. It's not magic. You should just go. No,
you
should just go
, you say to him, and point to the door.

But he's planted that stupid mustard seed, as they say, and you're pissed. First things first, the emergency room. The doctor asks how it happened and how much you had to drink; you don't have an answer to either question; he wraps your wrist in
a cast, hands you a little card with a triangle in a circle, writes an address on it, says he goes to a noon meeting in the neighborhood when he can.
You should go there right now.
It's five past noon now. You can be late.
He's cute.
Will there be other guys there who look like you? If I say yes, will you promise to go? Maybe. Okay, then yes.

So you go. You go and you sit in the back of the room and listen to the speaker talk about almost killing someone in a DUI and still not getting sober and you think, Well, I haven't done anything like that, it's not too late to just slip right out with no one noticing, but then the speaker talks a little about what her life was like before she even started drinking, feeling hopeless and not smart and like her problems were so specific and different from anyone else's that there were solutions out there for everyone but her. Which seems very specifically how you've been feeling for what seems like ever. She goes on to say that drinking helped that some, until she started crashing cars, and that when she finally got sober, ten years ago, she found other people who showed her how to live without drinking. There is a lot of laughter in the room during her talk, none of which seems all that funny to you, but the laughter gives you a good feeling. You understand that there's a recognition.

At break time, they pass around a pan and make announcements. The person in charge asks if anyone is celebrating a sober anniversary. Several hands go up; they all take turns saying their names and how long they've been sober. Each person gets cheers, whether it is celebrating a sober anniversary of three months or three years. You are beginning to feel something, sitting here, you can't quite identify it because it's not something you've really felt before. Belonging? You haven't even talked to anyone yet. Weird. The person in charge asks if it's anyone's
first AA meeting. Your hand goes up before your brain thinks better of it.
Fuck.
You're in AA forever now, obviously. You'll have to pay dues and pray to Jesus and fuck knows what else. The cheers in the room are louder than the ones for the other people celebrating. Well, okay, that's nice. The person next to you looks you dead in the eye, with a kind of warmth that's new to you. The person in charge says some words toward you after this, you're not sure what, you're a little overwhelmed, this morning you woke up thinking maybe a Bloody Mary would make things better, and now you're in AA for the rest of your life? You were never a rest-of-your-life kind of person. But you kind of are. When the meeting is over, the people to your left and right say something about happy destination roads and tell you if you're willing to do the work you can have an amazing life. This morning you woke up half drunk with a broken wrist and this afternoon you have ten new friends who take you to lunch and two or three of them are obviously weird and fucked-up but the rest of them are now your brothers and your sisters all over this land, in your life, forever, done.

—There's no one in charge of AA, Mom.

—Someone has to be in charge.

—No, there are no leaders, only trusted servants.

—That's not creepy or anything.

—It's not.

—Well, whatever. That's your big concern here?

—The rest of it works.

A
couple more years pass. You're still sober, but by now you've been unemployed for several months, so you begin to consider your options. You're not committed to staying in New York. You hear that a friend of a friend who's producing a new TV series in Los Angeles might maybe possibly be looking for a personal assistant. You're still not one for making advance plans. Your advance plan at this time is to start packing. You haven't forgotten about the driving issue, but it's been long enough by now that you've mustered up some small hope that you might be able to push through. You have learned thing one since then, if not thing two, so rather than shipping every last one of your possessions off to the city where you once resided for less than two weeks, you sublet your apartment, furnished, and leave New York with only a suitcase and a pile of books. What you don't do is schedule an interview before you get there, maybe consider interviewing over the phone. What you do is you just go. You can't think of a reason not to. Nothing is happening in New York. You'll figure out the driving thing when you get there. You're older and wiser now. It'll be different. You have friends in LA, you can ask for help if you need it, even though you probably won't. Ask. Or need it. Or
ask. You fly to LA, interview with the friend of a friend; he gives you the job. It's only two days a week, but that's fine. You'll pay your dues, if not your rent; one thing at a time. Hollywood will for sure recognize your overall hilarity and promote you accordingly.

In exchange for performing tasks that are for the most part unrelated to writing sitcoms—the fetching of dry cleaning, the steeping of tea, the filing of folders, the paying of bills, the running of general errands—the big perk of the job is that Donny, your new boss, lets you sit in on the writers' room meetings. You are to be silent in these meetings or you will be banished, possibly in a way that involves public shaming. This is not, you discover,
The Dick Van Dyke Show
. It's not one of those writers' rooms you see on TV where everyone is laughing, riffing, trading sarcastic but good-natured jabs, effortlessly working together to make the comedy happen; it is one of those rooms where a couple of personalities have created an atmosphere less conducive to comedy than to insults, hurt feelings, tantrums, and slammed doors. It's tense. So you heed your boss's advice to speak only when spoken to, take notes, eat the free snacks, and brew tea when asked. One day, a heated argument transpires between the lead actress, who is allowed by contract to be in the writers' room even though she is no kind of writer, and one of the actual writers, who is telling her in no uncertain terms that what she thinks is funny is very clearly not funny. Her joke is dumb-blond based, which is bad enough, but the real problem is that it just doesn't make sense, not even after she explains it.
The brown bear has to explain to the light-brown bear what a milkshake is.
Silence.
The brown bear is smarter.
Silence.
Because it's brunette! God!
Silence.
It went to bear college! Come on.
It's like a bizarro riddle. Everyone is at a loss. One of the writers speaks
up.
Do you watch this show? Fuck you, Jonah. Bear college isn't a thing. Yeah, I know, that's why it's funny. You picture it
, she says,
you picture bears at college, bears walking around, with bear books, playing bear Frisbee. It's funny. It's really not. It's hilarious! Bears at college! Doing things that bears don't do!
This goes on for some unendurable length of time, it might be only five minutes but it feels like a hundred; everyone tries to humor her until she leaves, but she won't, and you can think of no more excruciating way to spend five minutes.
This discussion is officially un
bear
able
, you say, to your surprise, out loud. The writers can't really stifle their laughter. It's not that funny, your mild pun; what is funny is that you, the newbie, have spoken up to the temperamental star, and she giggles too. She asks if you have any ideas for a bit that might make both parties happy, preferably a bit that has nothing to do with bears. Something kicks in, and you say you do before there's time to think better of it.
Okay, so the waitress has just put a milkshake down on your table. “Here's your margarita!” she says. You say to your date, “I know this is only our first date, but I hereby authorize you to euthanize me should I become unable to distinguish between a milkshake and a margarita. If I appear to exhibit pride upon identifying a milkshake as a margarita. Failing easy access to euthanasia, just bring a pitcher of margaritas. If you can be sure they're not milkshakes.”
It's a bit long-winded and only modestly funny, but it succeeds in breaking the tension in the room, which bursts into relieved laughter. A heavily revised and edited version of your joke makes it into the episode. This is your entire career in sitcom writing. It's not that there couldn't be more from here; there could. It's just clear now that nothing about this endeavor has been enjoyable.

You're a couple grand deeper into debt than before you left, with one more résumé credit you don't really need. What you
really want to do is write fiction. You can do that anywhere. New York is too expensive and you don't want to be there anyway. Clearly, it's time to move to Chicago. Just because it's the first I've heard of the idea doesn't make it surprising at this point. You will move and keep moving until you land in the right spot. This move happens with more or less the same amount of haste and suitcases as the last. Weirdly, I can tell just by the sound of your voice over the phone, about a week after you get there, that you're happier in Chicago. The way you gush about alleys and abandoned buildings sounds like you're describing Prague or Copenhagen.
It's my place, Mom
.
I'm glad, sweetheart. I know you needed to go. I can come visit.

But I'm sick with cancer. You've decided you were a fiction writer the whole time, that you had to get the TV job to know this for sure. You come home to visit while I'm in the hospital and read me some scenes about me from your novel that are pretty funny, but you don't have any big plan about where to go from there. You say
I'm not about plans
, I say
Yeah, I got that
. You move from LA to Chicago to be a fiction writer and I get sick and this messes up your not-plans.

It's a wonder you don't start drinking again, and when you come to the hospital you try to argue with me while I'm hooked up to twenty kinds of machines and wires.

—You're seriously trying to say I started an argument with you when you were in the hospital?

—We had an argument. You stormed off. Can I finish?

—Yes, I can't wait.

There's an old lady in the bed next to me and she's rambling on and on about I don't know what, but she keeps talking even
though the curtain between us is drawn. You and Victor are visiting and this lady's chatter about I-don't-know-what is making me nuts.
Lady!
I yell over.
Stop talking! The curtain is pulled! Mom
, you say.
Don't
Mom
me! This is my time with my visitors! That cunt is invading my privacy! Mom! Oh don't be all holier-than-thou, Betsy. Okay, I'm going. That's great. Walk off. I liked you better when you were still drinking!
You peer around the corner and whisper that you're so sorry to the lady before leaving the room.

—That's the argument I started. I said “Mom.”

—You made me yell.

—I made you yell. You called an old lady with cancer a cunt.

—I didn't say it to her face.

T
he next two years in Binghamton are all about the baby. You should have known. You sew the most precious clothes for the baby; later you make several sets of matching dresses for you, me, and my doll, one out of a darling red toile, another in pink with white rickrack trim, another from a tiny floral print. You genuinely enjoy having a girl and dressing her up and showing her off. (The doll alone gets a reversible raincoat, solid on one side, coordinating gingham on the reverse, not so much as a single stitch to be seen on either side. It's an engineering marvel.) You have not forgotten about singing, or New York City at all; even though you're an attentive new mother, even though it is a strong instinct in you, you vocalize when you can; why didn't you wait just a little longer to have kids? Don't some people do that? You still veer off, in your mind, baby in arms, to a life onstage, reviews in the
New York Times
, a high-rise apartment, a flash of someone with his arms around you who isn't Fred. You shake it off, that's not how it's supposed to go, but those flashes visit you daily, and when Dad gets a tenure-track job at LSU and moves us all to Baton Rouge, they become a constant presence for the next two years. Before the move, there's a brief discussion about how well it was going
for you in Binghamton before the baby, that if you just wait until she's in nursery school and you have the time to get going on your performing career, it would be good to stay (though it could conceivably help your case if played right, you deliberately fail to mention how much closer Binghamton is to the city than Louisiana—one thing at a time, to ease him into the idea, seems the best way to go), but he's the breadwinner, and even if he's not the most conservative early-sixties
I'm the man
kind of guy, not by a lot, the reality is that he's generating the income and this is a job he can't turn down. You suspect he secretly wants to keep you from having a career, though he's said nothing to indicate as much; in fact, he's even mentioned that Baton Rouge and New Orleans are both cultured cities where you can develop your voice and pursue work. There will be moments, after I'm in nursery school, when this obsession sends you to your bed for extended naps; Dad knows nothing of this, as somehow you manage to get back up every afternoon and put an apron on over your full skirt and blouse (no heels until dinnertime, to heck with that) to make supper at five when he likes it, but you know that the only real solution is to pursue your career. You discuss this with him, he is still in favor of it, believes as you do that you have the talent, although he is less sure when you raise the idea of traveling to New York on your own for proper training and auditions. You convince him that you are sure you can make it all work, though you're not at all sure that you can make it all work, you aren't even sure if you can make some of it work, but he is convinced and that's all that matters right now and so you dip into your savings account and he sends you off on your first trip to New York.